Of school I'd need an overplus, more lore than is assumed @3ad lib@1 by a writer ranked as frivolous, more style to grace my goose-quill's nib, and many other things, my love (genius would not be least thereof), to tell the marvels I descried in a church of this fair countryside. A church? And which, my poet, pray? They're thick as mounting larks in May. 'Tis that of Gambaseuil I mean which every day attracts the eye with its belfry leaning all awry, whose bell clangs dull as kitchen pot. (I speak no wicked word, God wot.) I'd need more school undoubtedly. But I will try, though I suppose I loom not large in poesy. The Muses nine they flout at me, and proud Polymnia thumbs her nose. 'Tis patent that the pen I need justice to such a theme to do is your zealous reed, Saint Chrysostom, or the stylus of Bertrand de Born, et cetera, @3turlutu@1. Babbler, your lay is overdue! I'll try with Homer to compare, with Virgil and Madame Tastu, Lord Byron and my god, Voltaire. Ye Muses hither hie amain! Briskly now! Pass the elegie, the satire and the epopee that I may sing in every strain. Reluctant, through the dawning day I went, love, having left your side (A bed's worth naught in summertide. He's an arrant knave who says me nay) and, to descend, descended gay, humming an air for humming's sake, of Gambaseuil the narrow way, by naught constrained this course to take. The wood, not yet from dreams withdrawn, having heard, 'neath evening's dusky veils, the passion of the nightingales, lay silent in the glimmering dawn. A dung-hill rooster sang afar the death of a belated star. I felt myself still more alone as down the slope I journeyed on. Spreading their rose-flushed summits high, with filtered dew the pine-trees wet path, bushes, and the spider sly, in the centre of her crystalled net. Suddenly, in the plains beneath, turned towards our forests and the dawn, the hunters blew their echoing horn in a view-halloo that taxed the breath. 'Mid the murmurings of myriad bees, the songs of horns more far away with swelling clamour wound their way into my ears' interstices. The birds, all wakened with a will, shook dulcet pearls from every bough, and pray who now would go and bid the blackbirds' empire to be still. And the cuckoos and the finches, too! The feathered host, from jay to lark, who chant and cheep the woodland through and tap light beaks against the bark! I, with no wings to soar from earth, sang too, towards where the morning stirred, feeling myself become a bird amid the universal mirth. "Paul Fort of France, awake to glory! The promised day has dawned at last, and poesy's bright standard hoary, uplifted, floats on freedom's blast." I saw through glinting forests green, heroic Vendees traversing, our buoyant Gallic songsters bring the lyrics of the new regime. By a gully's shelving slope betrayed, head over heels I rolled amain, arriving, without any pain, at the border of a woodland glade, and there my startled glances met . . . (I give you guesses three, my dear) . . . a cure making his toilette beside a royal musketeer. In the waters of a dreamy brook, to wash his fingers' unctuous skeins, besmeared and streaked with vivid stains, most ardently he undertook. A rare old man! Methought he bowed finny parishioners to bless. From venerable phalanges the iridescent bubbles flowed. Not far off on the sward, delighted with such fair presents to be strewed, a canvas and an easel stood a palette and two lanterns, lighted. His buttocks deep in tufted fern, (think not 'tis my imagination), tugging his boots off, D'Artagnan damned with black curses all creation. "Florent, your words should be deleted, weeded and tended like your flowers," scolded the priest. "Our task completed we'll take this huntsman saint of ours and hang him by Our Saviour's side. How my flock, amazed that sight to see, their eyes and mouths will open wide. 'Tis my masterpiece, apparently." I sneezed, when, swift as any breeze, the cure and the musketeer, one seizing the accessories, his boots the other, disappear leaving the lanterns twain alone. I snuffed them 'neath the pallid dawn. Even when fairy-tales befall one should be economical. Full day beneath the forest's tent, bathing each leaf in burnished gold, routed all mystery. On I went, when what strange sight should I behold that petrified me in mid course! (Three guesses? Come, take six instead.) A baby's wooden hobby-horse by a giant stag of gingerbread. We are not on earth to fathom all, and naught our souls will know, they say, when dawns that final, fatal day and Heaven's consuming thunders fall. This Raphael of a later age, plucked from a fable's flowered page, this guardsman in full panoply, whence came they? Fallen from the sky? For a mystic whom my humour suits, 'tis hard a halo to accord to easel, lantern, colour-board, those folio tail-piece attributes! What would you say if, in the wood, your path to such a tableau led? A stallion from the nursery stud by a giant stag of gingerbread! Naught surely. So I spoke no word. Silently through the wood I strode and quickly came upon a road where never a hare-brained rascal stirred. I trudged it, thinking I might seek (because it ran beside a bog) my curiosity to wreak on the customs of the azure frog. I did not see it. I accuse my little luck or froggie's ruse. Yet in those fair regions all is fair. Charming the daybreak's vaporous air, the trees uplifted fragrant crests, lovely, beneath the lucent morn, as, in creation's genesis, their forebears on the instant born. For harmony the stage was set, the bravest, the most lyrical! No savage heart have I, and yet to Nimrod is my soul in thrall. Then judge what happiness I knew, what singing blood my heart o'erflowed, when the hunt came streaming down the road, prepared to sound the death-halloo. No, the beast, the royal quarry, swerves. Farewell the chase! Day will have faded, if well my hunting knowledge serves, ere the death. His crest was scarcely jaded. The dogs lose hope. But, far away, with all my nerves I follow him. Upon his branching horns I skim. "Fly by the road of Rambouillet!" Red jackets sweep across the glade. Their alternation with the pines' green shafts is like a fusillade. They are gone, the stag with spreading tines, hunters and dogs. 'Tis still as death. One holds a trembling marguerite. Adieu, O chase that flies so fleet! One is sad at the border of a path. And as the gentle tear-drops fall a cuckoo mocks you with his call. The fantasy's reawakening, to the odour exquisite is due of trodden moss, that maddens you. One lives again, in wistful wise, the ardours of a vanished spring, and sees the golden hair of Lise. Love, be not vexed, although I know this affinity of sight and scent can be but half a compliment! Your body breathes the soul of roses. But earth's fresh, virginal redolence or the smell of moss in the forest, these bring back one's early innocence. I fear the scent of cypresses. And, a propos, my love, my flower, most sensitive of hearts that thrill, do you know how odours have the power to summon distant things at will? Objects, and beings dead and gone, friends, kinsmen, cats and doggies dear. Aye, scents can even make appear persons that one has never known. The smell of oaks has Charlemagne. Jeanne d'Arc from the elder-flower doth start. Which of our hunting Louis but smells of partridge? The Pompadour's perfume is vervain. But if eau de Cologne and snuff conjointly across my ravished senses come sure as the deuce (foul fiend, aroint thee!) I see the first Napoleon. From Mandreuse to where Germania rests, and from Gambais to Etang Neuf, I heard the jargonning of nests, ogled the blue-embrasured roof where, ending every avenue, idyllic Edens laugh. But soon a rifted bell, with the jangling tune of its cracked heart, beat the hour. 'Twas noon. O bells of marriage, bells of death, and bells of birth, for all your might, you yield, with no dissenting breath, before the bell of appetite. But at that moment where was I? In Paris? In the Bois du Boulogne? In some far corner of the sky? An azure placard made it known. I sniffed (with no trace of pride be it spoke. True, I had rested frequently.) Gambaseuil's pungent chimney-smoke, my goal precise . . . Geography and strategy, like Bonaparte, to weary out, one needs the aid of that convenient little chart in his umbrella's depths displayed. Where the first village huts were set, that brusquely on my vision broke, making a great to-do, I met a clustered throng of happy folk, girls, peasants in their portly prime, babes, scrawny spouses. All took part (I give you guesses twelve this time, my love.) -- in criticising art. Oh, sight benign! The village hums with frank and unaffected stricture (while churchward point a score of thumbs): -- "Saint Hubert! What a charming picture!" -- "The toads! What mummery! An abbe painting his gardener. O I say!" -- "'Tis a treasure for our church to hold. Rothschild would cover it with gold." "Ah," one declared, to his nose applying a finger trembling with finesse, "last year's Jeanne d'Arc, there's no denying, good gossips, showed more suppleness, contours more pleasing to the eye." -- "Oho!" they laughed, "A satyr! Fie!" The school-girls choired, in their precisest of tones, "Saint Hubert's far the nicest!" I passed them by. The church was there, small and sweet behind its hedge retired, blest belfry cleaving quiet air, sill by a cackling goose admired. White geese and tombs, what candours chaste against the grave-yard's sombre smudge! With paunch compressed, with swelling breast, with eyes alert, I went to judge. Preceded by a single bee, swiftly I entered, and at once the marvel that at morn the dawn's dark mists had hidden from my eyes arises, flames before them, cries across the chapel's narrow vault: "Sir What's-your-name, attention! Halt!" -- hung to the left of the sacristy. Struck to the bottom of my heart by the smell of pigments just applied, I sniffed the colours, scarcely dried, of that masterpiece of candid art. Yes, 'twas Saint Hubert as my whim in waking dreams imagined him, a guardsman of the king's in green, blue, red, with nose of aubergine, laced boots that shame the raven's hues, and purple breeches that o'erflow their tops in waves of indigo, blue of the Turco, blue of blues, loose hunter's blouse, a belt of leather in athlete-fashion doth confine; at throat and wrists bleached muslin fine, a green felt hat, a falcon's feather. "There is a canvas that's sincere! Painting that shows a poet's fire!" I murmured in my ego's ear, and, what I even more admire, no envious shadows interfere to filch, as with a sneak-thief's hand, one half the contours nobly- planned that dower my kneeling musketeer. But I forget: a flowing mane, like mine, of dusky locks that lie straighter than drumsticks, mine the eye, black, made for love, I well maintain, Adam's apple, fruit of gullet long -- 'tis I, but greater! -- no, I'm wrong; Heaven ne'er vouchsafed that I should ride a cabbage-cutter at my side. Besides, I'm clothed in black (my hoary regrets befitting), but observe how this Saint Hubert in his glory seems, though transported, full of verve, so gaily his blue arms are spread towards that stag-of-ten that stands so straight, sculptured in spicy gingerbread, rigid as Justice, firm as Fate. He has cause, poor beast! He knows the dread encumbrance that his brow adorns, the weight he carries on his head! Does there not die between his horns -- wide horns that like a lyre do seem -- a mighty Christ in flesh and blood, higher than shepherd's crook, a God a thousand empires to redeem? As proud as life, a pleasing sight, the sturdy charger made of wood, behind and somewhat to the right, close to the royal guardsman stood. His dwarfish stature to enhance, an ardent breath his nostrils blew. Ah, in your battles, Kings of France, how many steeds have died for you! But the eye is good, and fine the coat, as black as ink save at the feet, more white than is the snowy stoat, the mane and tail are disparate; one fire-red, t'other water-blue. Girt, coquettishly, between the two, the saddle is that Turco blue already praised anent Saint Hubert. And all this, stag, steed, musketeer, the great, pale god, the forest screen, bathed in a heavenly ray serene like a baptismal billow clear. Stalactite-like, through leafy mazes, the tale's protagonists between, it sifts from rifts of tender green, and gilds a greensward filled with daisies. And all this forms so sweet a scene, so fresh and candid it appears, and for the soul so sovereign, you fain would weep with happy tears, before this hymn of colour true. Soon sympathetic tear-drops start. Sharp pity overpowers your heart, and faith and fervour vanquish you. My face suffused with floods of brine, while mighty sobs new brews were broaching, I knelt before that sacred shrine and felt conversion fast approaching, when a bit of folded paper white below the canvas came to view. Pushed by the Fiend, I opened it and read the lines I read to you. "Painted at night, that God, whose eyes in secret see, the work might bless and that my flock I might surprise on my birthday. Freely I confess it was my gardener, Jean Florent, for blest Saint Hubert's portrait stood. One sees nearby the steed of wood that by his youngest son was lent. The duchess of Uzain it is, "our duchess" as one says (it suits her whim to act in comedies), who lent hat, sabre, blouse and boots. But, as no breeches could be had, Florent, the embroglio to salve, donated those that, when a lad, he wore in Tunis, a Zouave. The stag -- Lord, hear a sinner's prayer and pardon me! -- a year ago I bought in Montfort at the fair. It cost ten sous. It pleased me though. 'Twas from the Parish Fund I made this little purchase. As I crave the dying Christ my soul may save, 'twas only done the Faith to aid." That finished me . . . Posthaste I fied! . . . fainting, I gained your fair retreat, all pale, with hunger nearly dead . . . Come now, what do you say, my sweet?----"Is there a poet in Poesy who is not paid with words?" I ask. -- Ambrosia may the gods deny to him who finds his art a task. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...FIRST BOOK OF AIRS: SONG 17. SIC TRANSIT by THOMAS CAMPION LONDON'S SUMMER MORNING by MARY DARBY ROBINSON ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: 14 by PHILIP SIDNEY PSALM 81 by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE ASPIRATIONS: 7 by MATHILDE BLIND ZOPHIEL; OR THE BRIDE OF SEVEN: CANTO 3. PALACE OF THE GNOMES by MARIA GOWEN BROOKS HATCHET by WILLIAM THOMAS CALLAWAY JR. |